Bryton Rider 750 Review: Colour Touchscreen GPS At A Garmin-Beating Price?

Behold my full review of the Bryton Rider 750 bike GPS, brought to you in ALL the formats:

Mega video review; and
Full blog post with all the details (currently in note/bullet point form but I will build it out)

Good news: you don’t have to read/watch all them. Just pick the one that suits you best.

So what are we talking about?

Well, the Rider 750 is Bryton’s brand new top of the range bike computer. It has a colour touchscreen and has all the onboard navigation whizzbangery seen on the higher end Garmins (the Edge 830 and 1030/Plus) and Wahoos (the ELEMNT ROAM). But the price has been set at a very competitive level (well below any of these competitors).

Indeed, in price terms it competes with (and beats) the Edge 530 – a fine device, but one without ‘proper’ navigation and no touchscreen.

Bryton Rider 750

Bike GPS device with a colour touchscreen and full on-board mapping.

Check price - Amazon More info - Bryton website

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Bryton GPS devices have historically been a bit clunky in the usability department versus Wahoo and Garmin. How does the Rider 750? Read on Macduff and you’ll find out.

(Note: I also published an extensive ‘first look’ video and a YouTube ‘short’ review (i.e. less than 60 seconds), both of which are available on this blog post.)

Bryton Rider 750 Full Video Review – After Two Months Of Extensive Use

Please remember to like the video

Bryton Rider 750 Review: Summary Blog Post

What is it?

Fully featured bike GPS with onboard navigation and a colour touchscreen.
Sits at the top of the range of Bryton bike computers, despite it having a lower model number than the previous range topper, the Rider 860.

Price

Device only is £225 / $270.
With the HRM and speed and cadence sensors it costs £290 / $350.
The Rider 750 represents a lot of bike computer (essentially, premium features) for a mid-level price.

Look and Feel

Sleek and modern.
Two buttons on each side
USB charging point on the back with a rubberised cover to protect it from the elements (but not the ELEMNTs har har har….er, ha).

Size and weight

It ways 93 or 94g, which is neither here nor there
Size wise – get a ruler out
Compare it with other bike computers and phone

Screen

Nice and bright
I have found it clear and easy to read
Contrast is not as strong as, say, the ELEMNT BOLT. Even with full brightness on, which may reduce battery life, it is not as clear in really bright conditions.
As alluded to, though, this hasn’t caused me any issues when riding.

Touchscreen

My first and only touchscreen bike GPS so not sure what to expect.
It is great to have the combination of touchscreen and physical buttons
Makes certain tasks, eg. changing data fields on the fly quick and intuitive, with minimal button presses
In finger mode, not as refined as a smartphone.
But is marginally more likely to work with gloves on versus my iphone. Even then, it doesn’t always responded to a be-gloved swipe.

The App

These days the app is almost as important as the GPS device
You use it to:
1. Upload and store your ride data
2. Sync said ride data with Strava, Trainingpeaks and whoever the Rod Hull ‘Selfloops’ are
3. Create routes or sync them from Strava/RideWithGPS/Komoot
4. Create workouts and send them to the Rider 750 device
5. Change the settings on the device
The Bryton Active app is getting better as time goes on – it used to be very quirky. Now it is mildly quirky. It seems reasonably stable – it only crashed once

Computing Power

The Rider 750 takes 10-15 seconds to boot up, which I suppose isn’t out of kilter with similar Garmins and Wahoos.
Clearly it’s not an iPhone – but then an iPhone battery won’t last for 20 hours if you try to use it for GPS navigation or to record your ride on the Strava app.
Generally there isn’t much lag for standard features – certainly in the acceptable range for a bike computer. The mapping screen is slow to load up and there is a ‘Processing’ alert each time you press to zoom in or out.
The lack of computing umph does show up when the Rider 750 is planning a route and when you are zooming in/out or moving around the map.
Sometimes the device can require two swipes with my finger to get it to move on to the next screen but who knows if that’s the device CPU stopping to think or my finger not being conductive enough.

General usability

Garmins and Wahoos are a bit cleaner and more intuitive, both when using the device directly or interacting with it via the smartphone partner app.
For instance, neither the Rider 750 device nor the Bryton companion app is particularly proactive in telling you that there’s a firmware update is available. It’s only through selecting the data sync option (essentially forcing a data sync) from time to time do you discover there is one to download

Data screens and fields

Loads of different potential data fields can be displayed – I think up to 99 if you have the requisite data sensors and connections
In addition to number and text fields, there are a few cool graphical fields – like a speedometer dial display that shows current and average speed in a circular chart format and a heart rate chart displayed over time.
You can have up to 12 data fields shown in a grid on up to 4 standard data pages, plus a maps page and an elevation one. That is a lot of flexibility. Even with 10 data fields showing, it is easy to read all of the information when riding.
Whether your brain can interpret all that data is for you and your brain to decide.

Changing settings

Can either be done in the app or on the device – very flexible compared to my Wahoo ELEMNT BOLT, where you are limited on what you can change on the device, with the majority of settings changed via the app. This is a hassle if your phone is in your back pocket. Rider 750 settings, most importantly the data fields being displayed, can be changed directly on your handlebars using the touchscreen.
Less of a win versus Garmin Edges, where the majority of settings can be changed on the device. However, the combination of the physical buttons and the touchscreen makes for an intuitive and easy approach to changing, say, data fields on the fly.

Strava integration

The Rider 750 integrates with Strava in the sense you can sync the Bryton app with your Strava account and automatically upload ride data as soon as you’re finished, as well as download routes created in Strava.
It does not have a specific integration with, say, Strava Live Segments in the same way that, say, the Garmin Edge 530 or the Wahoo ELEMNT BOLT does.

Other Integrations

Whilst we’re talking about ‘integrations’ let’s talk about a what else the Rider 750 can connect to and interact with.
It connects to all the standard data sensors – HRM, speed/cadence, power meter.
ANT+ sensors only? The box suggests it works with BLE sensors but the recently uploaded comparison chart on the Bryton website shows a dash in this box where other computers in the Rider range support BLE heart rate and speed cadence sensors –
We mentioned Strava already. The Rider 750, via the Bryton Active app, can upload ride data and download routes (and maybe workouts?) from a number of other software platforms: Komoot, RideWithGPS, Training Peaks and something called Selfloops. No me neither.
Smart trainers via the ANT FE-C protocol – not able to test this because I don’t have one. You can either manually control the resistance on your trainer from the device, or have the device follow a workout or mimic a previous actual ride you have recorded.
Electronic gear systems – Shimano Di2, SRAM eTap, CAMPAGNOLO EPS
Radar

You can create a route using the Bryton app (or sync one from another ride creation app). So far so standard.
More interestingly, using only the Rider 750 device, you can use the voice navigation feature to say the name of a place which it will then create a route to.
I have not used this feature extensively, mainly because I ride locally where I know the roads. If I’m creating a route for leisure purposes, I like to select the specific roads
However, the voice recognition software does seem accurate. It identified correctly all the random place names I spoke into it and seemed fine creating a route to a town 8 miles from where I live (albeit the route went down the main road, whereas the cycle setting on Google Maps would take me on a quieter route).
The Rider 750 was also able to create a route to Nottingham, some 30 miles from my house, although it took about 30-40 seconds of processing time. The device managed to avoid sending me down the big dual carriageway (two lane highway for Amerifolk), which is the most direct (and dangerous) route, so that’s a win.
When I tried to get it to navigate to my home town, 108 miles away, it juddered and it processed, then it got stuck and maybe crashed. I’d suggest this feature is not really suited to long-distance route creation but would be useful for shorter routes you want to create on the fly.
One thing to note – for the voice search function, the device needs to be connected to the Bryton app via Bluetooth and then the phone needs to be connected to the internet – otherwise you get a repeated annoying notification to make sure the Bryton app is active.
I think otherwise the navigation, and the re-routing, works without the phone being connected, not that this is a particular issue other than in scenarios where I run out of phone battery mid-ride.

Battery life

Bryton says 20 hours
No way I’m getting near that on a single ride, or even 3-4 excursions in a row.
Doesn’t ‘feel’ like the battery is reducing particularly quickly. Certainly sufficient such that I’ve gone large multiple of rides without thinking about it, then, when suddenly thinking about charging it, the battery indicator bar is still above half.
I can’t get it to show a %age figure – just a graphical battery symbol – so more difficult to judge the amount of charge left versus other bike GPSs

Recording ride data

Generally good. Seems accurate enough for my purposes, though it’s not like I have a protocol for measuring these things. A quick comparison of similar routes recorded with the Rider 750 and the ELEMNT BOLT and then uploaded to Strava showed no discernible difference. Both of them had the orangey-red Strava route tracking closely enough with the Derbyshire windy roads shown on the map, even when zoomed in close.
I did have one incident, where the Rider 750 crashed towards the end of a longish ride (possibly because it was so cold – sub-zero taking into account the wind chill). Initially it said the file was corrupted and I couldn’t sync it with the app or Strava.
Eventually I downloaded the corrupted file by attaching the Rider 750 device to my computer via a USB cable and manually copying it across. I then ran the file through the ‘Corrupt Time Fixer’ option on the FIT File Tools website. I am not sure what inspired me to think this might be the issue, but it clearly was, as the file no longer seemed to be corrupted and I was able then to upload the FIT file directly to Strava.
The Rider 750 did finish recording the ride at the point I remember the screen freezing (perhaps literally), but luckily this was within a kilometre of my house. I’d probably have been less impressed if the (device) crash had occurred midway through.

Uploading ride data

Dead easy. Press the button on the side to stop the ride, tap the button on the screen that says ‘Save it’, and then it gets automatically uploaded to the Bryton app and onwards into the velosphere – specifically in my case Strava.

Surprisingly Useful Features

The Rider 750 has a couple of random quirky features that Bryton makes no fuss of whatsoever but are actually useful and, as far as I know, not seen on other devices:

Notifications Include WhatsApp Messaages

Firstly, in terms of notifications (i.e. when you get a text), the Rider 750 (like the Rider 450 I tested a while back) displays WhatsApp messages (in addition to standard texts and iMessages). Wahoo certainly doesn’t have this and I don’t think Garmin Edges do either.

The Bryton Active App Adds Turn-By-Turn Directions To Strava Routes

Secondly, as you may know, Strava routes files do not come complete with turn by turn directions. So when you download them to a GPS device, the alerts and the road names don’t pop up. On the Bryton Active app, if you select one of your synced Strava routes, gives you the option of turning it into a file with turn-by-turn directions right there in the app. Click this option, select a new name for the route, and hey presto it’s done, ready to ride. And it works – turn directions appear on the Rider 750 app as you ride the route.